ARGUMENT in oratory
Argument implies a point at issue, and will be more or less prominent in oratory according as the purpose of the speaker is more or less directed toward inducing his hearers to take certain action. Thus the lawyer's plea is intended to clear his client, and will be almost purely an argument that justice demands it ; while the after-dinner speaker, whose purpose is mainly to promote good feeling among those present, will avoid anything that might seem an effort to proselyte those present to views of his own. Compare pages 62, 67, 74. The division of the argumentative oration into parts is usually as follows : (1) The Introduction, (2) The Narration, (3) The Proposition, (4) The Argument, (5) The Conclusion. How prominentthis division (or Partition, as it is often called) should be made to the hearer, is a matter of some discussion, but all agree that the analysis should be distinct to the speaker. If formal partitions give the sermon less of the oratorical appearance, they render it, however, more clear, more easily apprehended, and, of course, more instructive to the bulk of hearers, which is always the main object to be kept in view. The heads of a sermon are great Resistances to the memory and recollection of a hearer. They serve also to fix his attention. They enable him more easily to keep pace with the progress of the discourse ; they give him pauses and resting-places, where he can reflect on what has been said and look forward to what is to follow. They are attended with this advantage, too, that they give the audience the opportunity of knowing, beforehand, when they are to be relieved from the fatigue of attention, and thereby make them follow the speaker more patiently. . . . If his heads be well chosen, his marking them out and distinguishing them, in place of impairing the unity of the whole, renders it more conspicuous and complete, by showing how all the parts of a discourse hang upon one another and tend to one point. —BLArs. On the other hand, Campbell remarks that the cohesion of the parts in a cabinet or other piece of furniture seems always the more complete, the less the pegs and tacks so necessary to effect it are exposed to view: Cicero did not, as some have asserted, totally condemn the practice of announcing the partition. He only condemned such long ones as burden the memory of the hearers, and being so confined to to them as never to indulge in a digression. Quintilian would have us always announce it. Fnélon's opinion concerning divisions is best expressed in his This figure bi used by Whately in another connection au follows: "It happens, unfortunately, that Johnson's style is particularly easy of imitation, even by writers utterly destitute of his vigor of thought ; and such imitators are intolerable. They bear the same resemblance to their model that the armor of the Chinese, as described by travellers, consisting uf thick quilted cotton covered with stiff glazed paper, does to that of the ancient knights ; equally glittering, and bulky, but destitute of the temper and firmness which was its sole advantage. At first sight. indeed, this kind of style appears far from easy of attainment, on account of its being remote from the colloquial, and having an elaborately artificial appearance ; but in reality, there is nothing less difficult to acquire. To string togethersubstantives, connected by conjunctions, which is the characteristic of Johnson's , tyle, is. in fact, the rndest and clumsiest mode of expressing our thoughts: we have only to findnames for our ideas, and then put them together by connectives, instead of interweaving, or rather felting them together, by due admixture of verbs, participles, prepositions, etc. So that this way of writing, as contrasted with the other, may be likened to the primitive rude carpentry. in which the materials were united by coarse external implements, pins, nails, and cramps, when compared with that art in its most improved state, after the invention of dovetail joints, grooves, and mortises, when the junctions are effected by forming properly the extremities of the pieces to be joined eons at once to connolidate and conceal the juncture. " It may be suggested that there is in the Eastlake style a modern revolt against the excessive concealment of themcan. by which the parts of a piece of furniture are made to cohere ; and that taste just now requires not only that a chair should be strong but that U should look strong, the sources of its strength being manifest. CRAP. MIL) THE PARTITION. 521 comment on the partition above quoted. "When, " says he, "we choose to divide a subject, we should do it plainly and naLurally. We should make such a division as is all contained in the subject itself – a division which elucidates and rnethodizes the matter, which may be easily remembered, and at the same time help to recall all the rest ; in brief, a division which exhibits the extent of the subject and of its parts. Exactly the opposite is the course of this man here, who endeavors to dazzle you at the outset, to put you off with three epigrams or three enigmas, which he turns and turns again so dexterously that you fancy you are witnessing some tricks of legerdemain. "—HERVEY. Misiton. —It is only in the act of composition, and occasionally in the course of delivery, that an arbitrary, mixed, or cryptic arrangement will often be wisely adopted. Of one of the czars of RUM Dr. Watts relates that when he first learned the art of war he practised all the rules of circumvallation and contravallation at the siege of a certain city of Lavonia; and he passed so much of his time in mathematical approaches that he wasted the season for taking the town. Some never acquire free method, because in their minds the subject is bound up with rigid notions of rhetorical unity. Thinking thus, they adjust almost all the parts of their sermons in such an order that the principal subject or proposition shall be continually kept before the bearer. Their plans are apt to resemble the pine or fir, the main body of which grows straight up to the very top of the tree, while branches shoot out on Its sides at regular Intervals; and there are, it must be allowed, certain subjects, e. g. , those of the argumentative and demonstrative kind, which sometimes derive considerable energy and gracefulness from the constant visibility of the stem proposition. But still it Is to be remembered that there is also a unity of amplification and of various applications. Almost all fruit-trees divide the trunk among the first branches, and eacrifice height and symmetry of stem, limb, and twig to that rotundity which exposes the greatest amount of fruit to the ripening weather and the admiring eye. It is, therefore, by keeping the utility of our sermon ever before us that we acquire the truest unity, and, at the same time, that art of deceiving art, of which Venantins Fortunatos writes. No man can methodize thoroughly well whose mind has not been disciplined to habits of sound thinking; for "method, " as Coleridge observes, "Is a power or spirit of the intellect, pervading all that it does, rather than its tangible product. " Nor is he likely to reduce any subject to a just method who has not a distinct, particular, and coMprehe. Jive knowledge thereof. But to learn to arrange a subject practically and popularly, we should add to all this much intercourse with men and considerable experience in public speaking. But is not an analytic mind necessarily lacking in force ? Believe it not. The tendency of method is exactly the opposite. By contributing to perspicuity and by reducing the whole subject to one view, it stimulates energy, sometimes to an extravagant degree. Massillon and Baxter were both analytic thinkers, and yet both wrote and spoke with a force that in Demoethenian. The latter studied the schoolmen chiefly, it would seem, because of their acuteness and skill in methodology. "And though, " says he. "I know no man whose genius more abhorreth confusion instead of necessary distinction and method, yet I loathe the impertinent, useless art, and pretended precepts, and distinctions which have no foundations in the matter. " Be somewhere says he never thought he understood anything until he could ailatomiso it. Method, therefore, as it belongs in germ and potentiality to the mind itself, so it is the most perfectly evolved by the most capacious and cultivated minds. —HxzvEx. So importantis analysis, that the best writers recommend its practice upon themes of all kinds, whether or not they are to be spoken upon. The young speaker will find it an excellent habit when in public assemblies of any kind to reflect upon what he would say if lie were called upon to speak, however impossible it may be that he should be called upon. In this way he will acquire readiness in seizing upon a tangible thought and in putting that thought into presentable form, that will some time prove of service. It willalso be found a most useful exercise for a beginner to practise—if possible under the eye of a judicious lecturer—the drawing out of a great number of such skeletons, more than he subsequently fills up ; and likewise to practise the analyzing, in the same way, the composition of another, whether heard or read. —WHAMMY. Above all things, in divisions take care of putting anything in the first part which cupposes the understanding of the second, or which obliges you to treat of the second to make the Prat understood ; for by these means you will throw yourself into great confusion, and be obliged to make many tedious repetitions. You must endeavor to disengage the one from the other as well as you can ; and when your parts are too closely connected with each other, place the most detached first, and endeavor to make that serve for a foundation to the explication of the second, and the second to the third ; POthat at the end of your explication the hearer may with glance perceive, as it were, a per rest body, or a finished building; for one of the greatest excellences of a sermon 18the harmony of its component parts, that the first leads to the second, the second serves to introduce the third ; that they which go before eureka a desire for those which are to follow ; and, in a word, that the last has a special relation to all the others, in order to form in the hearers' minds a complete idea of the whole. —CLAUDZ. (I) The Introductionis the last part to be composed. (See page 328. ) The best authorities concur in the opinion that the exordium should not be chosen and planned until the principal matter of the sermon be selected and arranged. This is in accordance Our. xxviLi THE ENTRODUCTION. 523 with Cicero's example and advice: "Quod primum eat dicendum postremum soleo cogitare. " (" The last thing one finds out is what to put first. "—Pascal. ) Some forbid us to dream of the introduction until the rest of the discourse has been written. But Vinet thinks this mode of proceeding is not natural, as a good exordium prepares the reader to Compose, as well as the congregation to hear. And yet he approves Cicero's method. If, however, we thus write our exordium, we are compelled to begin to arrange and to express those thoughts first which have occupied our thoughts the shortest time. Now, as a good exordium is confessedly very difficult to compose, and the success of the sermon so much depends upon its beginning, it is but fair to allow the preacher the longest possible time for pondering its materials and for making such changes in them as the composition of the rest may happen to suggest. —thravgr. The rule laid down by Cicero, not to compose the introduction first, but to consider first the main argument and let that suggest the exordium, is just and valuable ; for otherwise, as he observes, seldom anything will suggest itself but vague generalities, "common" topics, as he calls them, i. e. , what would equally well suit several different compositions ; whereas an introduction that is composed last will naturally spring out of the main subject and appear appropriate to it. —WHATELY. Demosthenes and Cicero were in thehabit of preparing at their leisure different introductions to be prefixed to their extemporaneous oration. . They thus secured variety at the expense of pertinence. That kind of exordium which might be adapted to several causes a as in Quintilian's time regarded with little favor, and was called vulgare, although he admits that it wasnot always avoided by the greatest orators. Some old rhetorician or other has compared such exordia to the sword used at the temple of Delphi, which served the double purpose of immolating the sacred victims and executing malefactors. — kizavity. Sometimesthe introduction may be omitted, the speaker proceeding at once to the matter in hand. Dean Swift, called upon to preach a charity sermon, was warned not to make it too long. So he chose for his text these words : "He that hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Lord ; and that which he hath given will he pay him again. " The dean, after looking around, and repeating his text in a more emphatic tone, added, "My beloved friends, you hear the terms of the loan; and now, if you like the security, down with your dust. " The result was a satisfactory collection. Let the student bear well in mind that the greatest possible diversity requires him occasionally to proceed at once to the matter in hand. —And yet some brief premonition is almost always necessary, lest the people imagine, as Claude says, that the preacher is aiming to do with them what the angel did with the prophet, when he took him by the hair of the head and carried him in an instant from Judea to Babylon. -HERVEY. Conciliation is the main purpose of an introduction. The speaker shows a certain presumption in coining before an audience to occupy their time, and lie must placate them by showing that he appreciates the privilege, and that his effort will be to do his utmost to justify it. Hence he should be moderate in tone and modest in inahner. If he can make some happy allusion to the place and time, especially to what has just been said, or to some circumstance fresh in the minds of his audience, he will gain attention the more readily because he will seem to rely rather on his wit than on his memory. The exordium and the peroration are, according to Cicero, the two parts which are to be devoted to excitation. But Quintilian has made an important distinction as to the degrees of excitation which these two parts of a speech allow. "In the introduction the kind feelings of the judge should be touched but cautiously and modestly ; while in the peroration we may give full scope to the pathetic. " . . One principal object in an exordium is to gain and secure attention. Among the things that draw attention are reverence and modesty. Simeon advises his students to adopt such a tone of voice as they would naturally choose if they were speaking to persons older than themselves and to whom they owed reverence. Vinet would have, the preacher even timid, but with this distinction of Marmontel, that he should be timid for himself but bold for his cause. Another way to make people give ear is to set out with a popular saying, objection, difficulty, apparent contradiction, excuse or question, which is afterward to be disposed of. A fact or short narrative is sometimes sufficient to seize and enchain the minds of an audience. . . . Some are in the habit of formally asking attention. . . . The transition from the exordium to the proposition should be short and easy. For the reason that the matter of their introduction is either irrelevant or badly arranged, some preachers appear to leap a very broad chasm when they pass from their exordium ; and a written or printed discourse of theirs seems, when read, not unlike a temple from which the portico has been separated by an earthquake. 11Emm. The Narration(or Description, as it is sometimes called), should be presented with all the art of interesting suggested in the chapter on this form of composition (see pages 208 and following), but with this kept in mind, that the story is told not for its own sake, but to prepare the minds of the hearers for the proposition and arguments to follow. Hence only that need be told which will tend to make one's hearers prepared to hear the side one is about to present ; though often this will require a frank presentation of circumstances that are, or seem to be, of contrary tendency. The Propositionusually precedes the Argument, and is to be stated distinctly (see page 318). A proposition that is well known (whether easy to be established or not), and which contains nothing particularly offensive, should in general be stated at once, and the proofs subjoined ; but one not familiar to the hearers, especially if it be likely to be unacceptable, should not be stated at the outset. It is usually better, in that case, to state the arguments first, or at least some of them, and then introduce the conclusion, thus assuming, in some degree, the character of an investigator. There is no question relating to arrangement more important than the present. -WHATELY. (4) The Argumentshould sometimes begin with 528 1P. M/i1In. MART V. refutation of the arguments of an opponent, or allaying of known prejudice on the part of the audience. Refutation of Objections should generally be placed in the midst of the Argument ; but nearer the beginning than the end. If indeed very strong objections have obtained much currency or have been just stated by an opponent, so that what is asserted is likely to be regarded as paradoxical, it may be advisable to begin with a Refutation ; but when this is not the case, the mention of Objections in the opening will be likely to give a paradoxical air to our assertion, by implying a consciousness that much may be said against it. If, again, all mention of objections be deferred till the last, the other arguments will often be listened to with prejudice by those who may suppose us to be overlooking what may be urged on the other side. Sometimes, indeed, it will be difficult to give a satisfactory refutation of the opposed opinions . till we have gone through the arguments in support of our own ; even in that case, however, it will be better to take some notice of them early in the Composition, with a promise of afterward considering them more fully, and refuting them. This is Aristotle's usual procedure. A sophistical use is often made of this last rule, when the objections are such as cannot really be satisfactorily answered. The skilful sophist will often, by the promise of a triumphant Refutation hereafter, gain attention to his own statement, which, if it be made plausible, will so draw off the hearer's attention from the Objections, that a very inadequate fulfillment of that promise will pass unnoticed, and due weight will not be allowed to the Objections. . . . The force of a refutation is often overrated : an argument which is satisfactorily answered ought merely to go for nothing ; it is possible the conclusion drawn may nevertheless be true ; yet men are apt to take for granted that the conclusion itself is disproved, when the arguments brought forward to establish it have been satisfactorily refuted ; assuming, perhaps, when there is no ground for the assumption, that these are all the arguments that could be urged. -WHATELY. CHAP. XXVII. ] FRANKNESS. 527 Franknessin stating objections that are sure to be presented is always an element of strength. On the above principle, that a weak argument is positively hurtful, is founded a most important maxim, that it is not only the fairest, but also the wisest plan to state objections in their full force ; at least wherever there does exist a satisfactory answer to them ; otherwise those who hear them stated more strongly than by the uncandid advocate who had undertaken to repel them, will naturally enough conclude that they are unanswerable. It is but momentary and ineffective triumph that can be obtained by manceuvres like those of Turenneres charioteer, who furiously chased the feeble stragglers of the army, and evaded the main front of the battle. Such an honest avowal as I have been recommending, though it may raise at first a feeble and brief shout of exultation, will soon be followed by a general and increasing murmur of approbation. Uncandid as the world often is, it seldom fails to applaud the magnsnimity of confessing a defect or a mistake, and to reward it with an increase of confidence. Indeed, this increased confidence is often rashly bestowed by a kind of over-generosity in the public, which is apt too hastily to consider the confession of an error as a proof of universal sincerity. Some of the most skilful sophists accordingly avail themselves of this, and gain credence for much that is false by acknowledging, with an air of frankness, someone mistake, which, like a tub thrown to a whale, they sacrifice for the sake of persuading us that they have committed only one error. -WHATELY. Objectionsto the view presented must not be undervalued (see page 64). On the whole, the arguments which it requires the greatest nicety of art to refute effectually (I mean for one who has truth on his side) are thosewhich are so very weak and silly that it is difficult to make their absurdity more palpable than it is already. -WHATELY. Cicero tells us that he always conversed at full length with every client who came to consult him ; that he took care there 528 ARGUMENT. (Pam V. should be no witness to their conversation, in order that his client might explain himself more freely ; that he was wont to start every objection, and to plead the cause of the adverse party with him, that he might come at the whole truth and be fully prepared on every point of the business; and that after his clienthad retired he used to balance all the facts with himself. —Butia. In former times men knew by experience that the earth stands still, and the sun rises and sets. Common-sense taught them that there could be no antipodes, since men could not stand with their heads downward like flies on the ceiling. Experience taught the king of Bantam that water could not become solid. —WHAMMY. The Irish immigrant who wrote back to his brother to come over to a country where they had meat three times a week, was asked why he said that when he himself had meat every day. "Faith, an' would ye have him belave me a liar intirely ?" he replied ; and his native wit did not mislead him ; he could convince his brother best by making his statement credible. Prejudiceis best overcome by showing that another view is preferable, without unnecessarily pointing out that the view now held is absurd. Of course it is not meant that a refutation should ever appear (when that can be avoided), Insufficient; that a conclusion should be left doubtful which we are able to establish fully. But in combating deep-rooted prejudices, and maintaining unpopular and paradoxical truths, the point to be aimed at should be to adduce what is sufficient, and not oamk more than is suMcient to prove your conclusion. If (in such a case) you can but middy men that your opinion is decidedly more probable than the opposite, you will have carried your point more effectually than if you go on much be5ond this to demonstrate, by a multitude of the most forcible arguments, the extreme absurdity of thinking differently, till you have affronted the self-esteem of some and awakened the distrust of others. A French writer, M. Say, relates a story of someone who, for a wager, stood a whole day on one of the bridges of Paris, offering to sell a five-franc piece for one franc and (naturally) not finding a purchaser. Laborers who are employed in driving wedges into a block of wood are careful to use blows of no greater force than is just sufficient. If they strike too hard, the elasticity of the wood will throw out the wedge. . . . Some, perhaps, conscious of having been the slaves or the supporters of such preju. dices as are thus held up to contempt (not indeed by disdainful language, but simply by being placed in a very clear light), and of having overlooked truths which, when thus clearly explained or proved, appear perfectly evident oven to a child, will consequently be stung by a feeling of shame passing off into resentment, which stops their ears against argument. They could have borne perhaps to change their opinion, but not so to change it as to tax their former opinion with the grossest folly. They would be so sorry to think they had been blinded to such an excess, anti are so angry with him who is endeavoring CaaP. ItIDIC17LE. 529 to persuade them to think so, that these feelings determine them not to think it. — MitATILY. Hence the absurdity of the paradox that he who confesses a mistake merely shows that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday; the fact that a man was mistaken yesterday, so far as it shows anything, indicates that he is likely to be mistaken to-day. Ridicule is a most effective mode of refutation. Cleverly to burlesque an opponent's arguments will cover him with confusion. It was a just opinion of Gorgias, and approved by Aristotle, that the serious argument of an adversary should beconfounded by ridicule, and his ridicule by serious argument. —CAMPBELL. He (Sydney Bohol') says : "To express is to carry out. To express a mind is to carry out that mind into some equivalent By an equivalent I mean that product of an active mind which being pre-ented to the same mind when passive, could restore the former state of activity. " This seems to us to mean (if it means anything) thrt the full, verbal expression of any feeling—hate, for instance—would be such VillIqs as would arouse the feeling of hate in the mind that had originally felt it But as this feeling, according to Mr Doha, is to be excited In the mind of whose active feeling it is an expression, it follows that the only possible judge of the perfect expression of a feeling is the person who expresses it, for he is the only one who can tell whether the words are adequate to reexpress the feeling in his mind. Thns the only possible judge of a poem is the author, a conclusion which will be eagerly bailed by many unappreciated geniuses. —Spechaer, July 1, 1878. Coed Temper must be maintained under any provocation (see pages 30, 77). It is not unfrequently the case that persons who are participating in debate become flushed with irritation, and render ill-natured and splenetic replies to questions which may be propounded to them by a debater on the opposite side of the question to themselves. This is exceedingly impolitic. If a , speaker cannot preserve his composure when such interrogatories are put to him he ought to refrain from any replication to them whatever. For a mere ebullition of bad temper, without being armed with the property of superior wit or repartee, places the speaker himself in a disadvantageous point of view before his audience, and sheds an enervating influence on his cause. —McQur. ss. Logic is the proper criterion of argument considered 530 ARGIIMENT. V. in itself, and it is for Rhetoric only to apply and arrange the reasoning that logic provides. In general it may be said that the strongest arguments should come last, and that when circumstances make it necessary to put the strongest first, they should be recapitulated in reverse order. Of all rules it is most important to converge all one's power on the main point at issue. Ignore the nonessentials (see page 69), but let nothing swerve your mind or that of your hearers from the strong point on which you rely. "Know your fact ; hug your fact. " Indeed, in any composition that is not very short, the most frequent and the most appropriate kind of conclusion is a recapitulation either of the whole or of part of the arguments that have been adduced. —WasTKLY. It is a weighty remark of Cicero that "it will be necessary to avoid letting it have the air of a childish display of memory ; and he will best keep clear of that fault who does not recapitulate every trifle, but touches on each particular briefly and dwells on the more weighty and important points. " Quintilian advises us to vary and enliven our enumerations with different figures, and cites as an excellent example Cicero's oration against Venus : "If your father himself were your judge what would he say when these things are proved against you ?" and then enumerates the recapitulation. Manly is unsparing in his censure of enumerations such as were made in his day. He quotes in his favor the [[language] of Cicero, who compares the orator that dryly and formally recapitulates to a serpent crawling round in a circle and biting his own tail. HERVEY. Unity is more important in oratory than in any other composition, yet it does not exclude occasional digression for legitimate ends. The imagination is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate and incapable of bearing fatigue ; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, Cum. . XXVII. ] UNITY. 531 exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest. —Russarr. The effect of disorder in reasoning is sometimes grand and overwhelming, like that of an army scaling the walls of a city. Robert Hall's manner is an example of this. Foster compares his independent propositions to a number of separate and undisciplined savages. . . . He who knows not how to wander knows not how to explore ; and circumnavigators have changed the map of the world and greatly enlarged the domain of civilized nations, because furious gales swept them out of their course, drove them up and down, and finally wrecked them among the rocks of the unknown coast. "I have observed, " says John Bunyan (" Grace Abounding, " 287) "that a word cast in by the bye bath done more execution in a sermon than all that was spoken besides. " "He wanders from his subject, " complained some critic of the late English preacher, John Gualter. "Yes, " was the reply, "he wanders from his subject to the heart. " . . . The regressions of Demosthenes are more frequent and more natural. Lord Brougham, commenting upon a passage of his oration on the Crown, thus draws attention to them, and at the same time contrasts them with those of Fox. "Here is the same leading topic once more introduced ; but introduced after new topics and fresh illustrations. The repetitions, the enforcement again and again of the same points, are a distinguishing feature of Demosthenes, and formed also one of the characteristics of Mr. Fox's great eloquence. The ancient, however, was incomparably more felicitous in this than the modern ; for in the latter it often arose from carelessness, from ill-arranged discourse, from want of giving due attention, and from having once or twice attempted the topic and forgotten it, or perhaps from having failed to produce the desired effect. Now, in Demosthenes this is never the case ; the early allusions to the subject of the repetition are always perfect in themselves, and would sufficiently have enforced the topic had they stood alone. But new matter afterward handled gave the topic new force and fresh illustration by presenting the point in a new light. "—HERVET. (5) The Conclusion(or Peroration, as it is coin 532 ARGUMENT. Mawr V. monly called) is so important that even the extempore speaker is advised to be sure of very nearly the language he will use. It is the part that remains in the bearers' minds, and that more than any other affords the basis for estimate of the entire address. Many a noble speech has been spoiled because the orator groped about fora place to stop, and failed to find it before he had disappointed and discomfited his hearers. It is observed by all travellers, who have visited the Alps or other stupendous mountains, that they form a very inadequate notion of the vastness of the greater ones till they ascend some of the less elevated (which are yet huge mountains), and thence view the others still towering above them. And the mind, no less than the eye, cannot so well take in and do justice to any vast object at a single glance as by several successive approaches and repeated comparisons. Thus, in the well known climax of Cicero, in the oration against Verres, shocked as the Romans were likely to be at the bare mention of the crucifixion of one of their citizens, the successive steps by which he brings them to the contemplation of such an event were calculated to work up their feelings to a much higher pitch : "It is an outrage to bind a Roman citizen ; to scourge him is an atrocious crime; to put him to death is almost parricide ; but to crucify him—what shall I call it ?" So in the ideal address, as the speaker rises, the audience look upon him with indifferent curiosity ; they are attracted by his introduction, they are interested in his narration, impressed by his argument, and, finally, roused to enthusiasm by his conclusion. A famous preacher said wisely that if he failed to make the last part of his address more forcible than the first, he would go back and enfeeble the first rather than have the audience dampened by an anti-climax. It may be worthwhile here to remark that it is a common fault of an extempore speaker to be tempted, by finding himself CHAP. XXVII. ] THE CONCLUSION. 533 listened to with attention and approbation, to go on adding another and another sentence (what is called in the homely language of the jest "more last words") after he had intended, . and announced his intention, to bring his discourse to a close ; till at length, the audience becoming manifestly weary and impatient, he is forced to conclude in a feeble and spiritless manner, like a half-extinguished candle going out in smoke. Let the speaker decide beforehand what shall be his concluding topic, and let him premeditate thoroughly not only the substance of it, but the mode of treating it, and all but the very words ; and let him resolve that whatever liberty he may reserve to himself of expanding and contracting other parts of his speech, according as he finds the hearers more or less interested (which is for an extemporary speaker natural and proper) he will strictly adhere to his original design in respect of what he has fixed on for his conclusion ; and that whenever he shall see fit to arrive at that, nothing shall tempt him either to expand it beyond what he had determined on, or to add anything else beyond it. -WHAMMY. The Will of the audience is to be influenced in the conclusion. The introductiofi appeals to their taste, and pleases; the argument appeals to their understanding, and convinces; the conclusion appeals to their passions, and persuades to action. It is worth remarking, as a curious fact, that men are liable to deceive themselves as to the degree of deference they feel toward various persons. But the case is the same with many other feelings also, such as pity, contempt, love, joy, etc. ; in respect to which we are apt to mistake the convictionthat such and such an object deservespity, contempt, etc. , for the feeling itself—which often does not accompany that conviction. —WHATELY. We often appreciate the good, the true, the noble, when they inspire no impulse to contact. To say that it is possible to persuade without speaking to the passions is but at best a kind of specious nonsense. The coolest reasoner always in persuading addresseth himself to the passions 584ARGUMENT. [PART V. some way or other. This he cannot avoid doing if he speaks to the purpose. To make me believe, it is enough to show me that things are so ; to make me act, it is necessary to show that the action will answer some end. That can never be an end to me which gratifies no passion or affection in my nature. You assure me "it is for my honor. " Now you solicit my pride, without which I had never been able to understand the word. You say, "It is for my interest. " Now you bespeak my self-love. "It is for the public good. " Now you rouse my patriotism. "It will relieve the miserable. " Now you touch my pity. So far, therefore, is it from being an unfair method of persuasion to move the passions that there is no persuasion without moving them. But if so much depend on passion, where is the scope for argument? Before I answer this question, let it beobserved that in order to persuade there are two things which must be carefully studied by the orator. The first is to excite some desire or passion in the hearers ; the second is to satisfy their judgment that there is a connection between the action to which he would persuade them and the gratification of the desire or passion which he excites. This is the analysis of persuasion. The former iseffected by communicating liVely and glowing ideas of the object ; the latter, unless so evident of itself as to supersede the necessity, by presenting the best and most forcible arguments which the nature of the subject admits. In the one lies the pathetic ; in the other the argumentative. These incorporated together constitute that vehemence of contention to which the greatest exploits of eloquence ought doubtless to be ascribed. —CAmumm. Instead of exclaiming as Demosthenes ceased, "What an orator!" his hearers would call out, " Up ! let us march against Philip. " The one way to rouse the passion of the audience is to be thoroughly aroused one's self. "If you wish me to weep, " says Horace, "you must first yourself be deeply grieved. " But Vinet admirably remarks that Horace does not say the orator must shed tears in order to inspire them. His power is in the emotion he feels, not in the eflAP. XIVILJ PERSUASION. 535 expression of it ; and he will affect his audience most by seeming to struggle to repress its manifestation. Shakspere's art is nowhere more perfect than where he illustrates this in the speech of Antony over the corpse of CEesar. It was remarked above that if the pathetic exceeds a certain measure, from being very pleasant it becomes very painful. Then the mind recurs to every expedient, and to disbelief among others, by which it may be enabled to disburden itself of what distresseth it. And indeed whenever this recourse is had by any, it is a sure indication that with regard to such the poet, orator, or historian hath exceeded the proper measure. —CAnosimn. The proper course for the orator to take is to excite the emotions of the hearers by means of images, and not to attempt to execute any images in the mind of the hearer by means of his emotions. For while some of the passions and sentiments appear to have the power to execute images in the mind independently of volition and the judgment, yet it should be considered that as the orator is necessitated to address the mind of the hearer in accordance with its common and normal operations, he cannot count upon this reflex art, which the hearer may indeed practise upon his own imagination, but which the orator cannot reasonably expect to practise upon it except incidentally and casually, and therefore with no uniform results. —HERVEY. Sermons would probably have more effect if instead of being, as they frequently are, directly hortatory, they were more in a didactic form ; occupied chiefly in explaining some transaction related, or doctrine laid dowu in scripture. The generality of hearers are too much familiarised to direct exhortation to feel it adequately ; if they are led to the same point obliquely as ft were, and induced to dwell with interest for a considerable time on some point closely though incidentally connected with the most awful and important truths, a very slight application to themselves might make a greater impression than the most vehement appeal at the outset. Often. indeed, they would themselves make this application unconecionaly, and if on any this procedure made no impression, it can hardly be expected that anything else would. To we a homely illustration, a moderate charge of powder will have more effect in splitting rock, If we begin by deep boring, and introducing the charge into the very heart of it, than ten tirnee the quantity exploded on the mime. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Division of the argumentative oration, p. 519. Prominence of the partition, p. 519. Importance of analysis, p. 522. • The introduction, p. 522. Sometimes omitted, p. 523. • • Conciliation, p. 524. • • The narration, p. 525. 8. The proposition, p. 525. • • The argument, p. 525. Frankness, p. 527. Objections, p. 527. Prejudice, p. 528. Ridicule, p. 529. • Good temper, p. 529. Unity, p. 580. The concluaion, p. 531. Influencing the will, p. 533.